Question: which is easier for you to invite your unchurched friends and neighbors to? Also which one do you think they are more likely to respond to?
The Sunday morning church service.
or
Summer free movies in the park with free popcorn, lemonade, and frozen yogurt, bounce house and face-painting?
The fairly obvious answer is the second one and that answer is more than hypothetical to me as our church just finished sponsoring the second one of three Fun Free Friday Movie nights this summer. A professional I do business with attended with his daughter. Though we'd talked about church, he was someone who previously was not interested in attending any church events. But not only did he attend this one, he went out of his way to too thank me and tell me what a great time they had.
As I was sharing his response with one of the leaders at our church, she responded by telling me that one of the reasons they did this is because events like this are such an "easy ask." I'd never heard that term before (probably most of the rest of the world has), but I loved it and wanted to share it with you, along with some related ideas on how your church communication ministry can apply them.
What makes an "easy ask" for a church event?
Here are some characteristics:
- This is an event that you aren't embarrassed to invite an unchurched friend to attend.
- There is no cost, no obligation to attend.
- It is sponsored by your church, but not an obviously churchy event.
- You have something tangible to remind them of the event. We had postcards/invitation cards with the time, date, location and website link on them. For additional information on how to create invitation cards and how you can use them effectively: https://www.effectivechurchcom.com/2012/10/church-invitation-cards-why-they-work-so-well-how-to-use-them/
- The reason this last detail is so important is that it isn't easy to ask someone to something if they don't know how to get there, if there is a cost or not, what is involved. Communications are one of the most important details and one many times forgotten--but remember you can have the greatest event in the world, but if you don't have something tangible (postcard, business card, invitation of any kind) to remind people of the details when they remember it at the last minute, they are not likely to attend.
Why schedule easy-ask events?
In our post-Christian world where few people have a felt need to go to church on Sunday morning, easy-ask events are a wonderful bridge to involvement with your church. You can create these events around any special event (free movies, any fun things for kids and families) or around any holiday or seasonal celebration.
To contact people for further interaction and invitations to your church you can capture names and contact information with sign-ups for free drawings (at our summer events, we have a variety of local business gift cards with the big prize give-away of a $200 Target gift card). There is a lot of additional information on follow-up after special events on this website and one of the most useful articles is: Follow-up after a church holiday outreach event: speed dating or relationship building?
Now it's your turn
You can use any holiday, a fun celebration, or any special event in your community as an "easy-ask" event for your church members.
Please share any ideas or events your church has done in the past in the comment section below--let's make it easy for everyone to invite everyone they know to church!
